That was not the commissary's way. So he began to question abruptly, in very bad Portuguese, as to the state of her larder, the elder woman, who, ugly and blear-eyed, with ragged, scanty dress, and bare feet, yet wore a necklace of beads and earrings of gold. She answered tartly, that it being a fast-day, there was no flesh in the house. They had _bacalhao_ and _sardinhas_, and garlic, and pepper, and onions, and oil; and everything that Christians wanted on a fast-day. She forgot to say that the house was without flesh many more days than the church commands. L'Isle, with more address, applied to the younger woman with better success, inquiring after accommodations for the ladies. He so moved her that she snatched up the only lamp in the room, and, leaving the rest of the party in the growing darkness, ushered the ladies up the ladder, like stairs, to the only two chambers where they could be private. Shortridge, meanwhile, finding out the desolate state of the larder, let the woman know that they had not come unprovided with a stock of edibles of their own. He urged her to make preparations for cooking it; so rousing the old man from his chimney corner, she carried him out with her, and they soon returned with no small part of a cork-tree; and when Lady Mabel and Mrs. Shortridge came down, a cheerful blaze had brought out more fully the desolation of the room in dispelling half its gloom. "I trust you have found a habitable chamber over head," said L'Isle to Lady Mabel. "I were a heretic to complain," she answered. "It is true the room has no window; but it has a square hole in the wall to let in the light and let out the foul air. The bed is hard and not over tidy. But what is wanting in cleanliness is made up in holiness; for the bedstead has an elaborate crucifix carved at its head, and I shall sleep under its immediate protection. On the slightest alarm, by merely throwing my arms upward, I can lay hold on the cross, and nothing will be wanting to the sense of security but faith in this material symbol of my faith. I shall have saintly company, too. On the wall to the right is a print of St. Christopher carrying the infant Christ over a river, and a bishop, in full canonicals, waiting on the other side, with outstretched arms, to receive him; on the left, is a picture of St. Antony, of Padua, preaching to the fishes. Religion is truly part and parcel of this people's every day life; and the reality of their devotion, and the falsehood and frivolity of many of its objects, make a contrast truly painful to me."